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| Exegesis is the fancy word for explaining the Scriptures. The Church Growth Movement - also promoted by Otten and Christian News - is rationalistic marketing, which is like making ice cream by measuring the weight of a cow. |
I have enough perspective to write about the destruction of private schools and denominations. My thesis is - In one generation, a short one at that, a denomination or a private school can be ruined.
A short generation is only 20 years.
Let me start with the mainlines. I went to a Lutheran Church in America college, Augustana, which was the center of the old Augustana Synod, a denomination named for the Augsburg Confession, protesting against revivalism and that generic Evangelical doctrine that included everyone and offended no one but God.
When my wife and I met at Augustana, 50 years ago, the college had required chapel, a Lutheran chaplain, and liturgical worship was the norm in the LCA and LCMS. I was one of the few who had attended a WELS parish (only for a wedding). The Lutherans I knew in Moline were traditional, and our Augustana congregation was antique by today's standards.
Likewise, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary in Ontario, Canada, was also a throwback by ELCA standards today. But the retired systematics professor, Otto Heick, often studied in WELS, was replaced by Paul Tillich fan, Aarne Siirala, whose favorite book was The Shining Stranger until I mocked its pseudo-scientific Gnostic nonsense in class.
ELCA has sunk so low that it embraces Pastor Horst Gutsche, jail-bird, in Canada, and the WELS jail-birds in America.
How does this happen?
Denominational schools are controlled by a committee that makes the hiring decisions. They only need to get a majority on the committee to carry out their agenda. Then they replace the rest with their own kind. That happens without fanfare and the faculties are changed, professor by professor. The head of the institution can make a difference, but the bureaucracy carries out the real change.
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| Waldo Werning, Otten's buddy, was a Who's Who in Church Growth in the LCMS, but also linked with the ELS and WELS. Valleskey paid homage to Werning in his Figs from Thistles essay in WLQ. |
WELS-LCMS-ELS Examples
The Fuller Seminary, Church Growth money factory absorbed the LCMS, WELS, ELS, and the snarly, dying CLC (sic) in only 20 years. In fact, all the Lutheran sects are dying now, as shown by their mergers, closings, out of control tuition costs, and blatant doctrinal apostasy.
Beginnings - Fuller Seminary cleverly invited world mission leaders from all denominations, then American mission leaders, to their money factory. That enabled denominational leaders to have one Enthusiastic voice in getting everyone else to join the Church Growth Movement.
Like the Social Gospel Movement of the early 20th Century, the true believers could be spotted by their gushing about this new movement, which came under fire but prevailed by brainwashing the simpletons in charge of WELS-ELS-LCMS-LCA/ALC (now ELCA).
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| The dunces of the 1970 Mordor class became the leaders of WELS. DP Rutschow has a traditional church but forces CGM on his underlings. |
During the years of conflict, those objecting were silenced, expelled, or hated out. In Lutherdom, no one was teaching the efficacy of the Word in the Means of Grace. Oddly enough, some generic Protestants found time to expose the Church Growth Movement. An engineer told me at a gathering, "Fuller has ruined every Calvinistic congregation through its Fuller-trained pastors."
Needless to say, all this Fuller Seminary study was funded by the denominations - but that is none of your business. Thrivent gave grants - but that is not your money, so stop complaining. It is their money - whichever
In the secondary and tertiary stages of this Church Growth cancer, the ambitious knew they could get ahead by borrowing their way through Fuller Seminary's DMin program. There they would be confronted by a feminist committee if they wanted to uphold the Pauline standards on women teaching men and usurping authority from men. They could learn from Chief Tiddlywink C. Peter Wagner, whose Pentecostal ravings set a new, low standard in teaching.
Church Growth is a Stage 4 cancer now. The apostates no longer need to use the magical phrase Church Growth Movement. Now it is equated with Evangelism or Missions or Diaper Changing Academies (Pre-Schools).
Mark Jeske's Church and Change? - straight outta Fuller Seminary, with stops along the way at various occult thinkers like Cho, Schuller, and the gypsy palm-reader on the corner.
Church and Change Founder John Lawrenz passed the Baton of Apostasy to Steve Witte, illiterate DMin, just another C and C Founder, who served two (2) congregations in the Appleton area.
